Essex Corp

Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to buy Essex Corp. for about $551.5 million to expand sales to U.S. government defense and intelligence customers. The price would be $24 a share in cash, or about $580 million including debt, Century City-based Northrop said. Shares of Northrop fell $1.42 to $64.98. Columbia, Md.-based Essex rose 33 cents to $19.98.

Northrop Grumman Corp. agreed to buy Essex Corp. for about $551.5 million to expand sales to U.S. government defense and intelligence customers. The price would be $24 a share in cash, or about $580 million including debt, Century City-based Northrop said. Shares of Northrop fell $1.42 to $64.98. Columbia, Md.-based Essex rose 33 cents to $19.98.

Country squires were stunned when a German family auctioned off its 485-acre estate in Tipperary recently for $8.6 million--almost three times its estimated value. But it wasn't just the hammer price creating the buzz. It was the nationality of the bidders: Irish vs. Irish. From Kildare to Kerry, Ireland's nouveaux riches are buying back historic country estates and castles, elbowing out foreigners who aren't used to the local competition.

Researchers here and in Goleta will launch the first major study in more than a decade to analyze when drivers experience fatigue and how long they can remain alert behind the wheel, officials said Tuesday. Scripps Clinic and Essex Corp. researchers will monitor long-haul truckers on the road, measuring their wariness and wakefulness, during the two-year, $1.3-million study funded by the Federal Highway Administration and the trucking industry.

A civilian security officer at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station is suing the federal government for more than $6 million for an incident in which he was allegedly kidnaped and beaten during an exercise designed to test response to a terrorist attack. Ronald Sheridan, 51, of Los Angeles and his wife, Margaret, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles late Tuesday.

Dow Chemical Co. agreed Monday to acquire Essex Chemical Corp. for $367 million, rescuing it from the unwelcome advances of Switzerland's Gurit-Heberlein AG. Dow Chemical's $36-a-share price for all of Essex's outstanding shares easily tops Gurit's offer for a controlling stake in Essex of $32 a share, a conditional offer that was rejected last week by Essex's board. In a joint statement, the two American companies said Dow Chemical will conduct a tender offer for all of Essex's 10.

Walter Patzl, a target of the federal government's latest investigation into illegal technology shipments to the Soviet Union, is hardly the picture of a high-tech wizard. The tall, 32-year-old, Austrian-born businessman came to the United States in the late 1970s to work as a marketing consultant at the Los Angeles offices of the Austrian Trade Commission.

For U.S. military firms, the latest revelations of highly sophisticated hacker attacks on Google Inc. are highlighting a new reality, and a potentially lucrative business: The battlefield is shifting to cyberspace. Google's admission last week that it and other large companies were infiltrated by cyber-spies is bolstering prospects for major military contractors that in recent years have been intensifying their focus from developing weapons to defending computer systems and networks.

The stock market Arallied Monday, carrying through on a rebound that began last week at three-month lows. However, trading was so light that most analysts saw little substance in the advance. The Dow Jones industrial index advanced 24.00 points to close at 2,041.43. The index dropped below 2,000 last Tuesday before beginning its recovery. Advancing issues outnumbered declines by nearly 2 to 1 in nationwide trading of New York Stock Exchange-listed stocks.

NEITHER FATHER NOR DAUGHTER looks much like a detective. He, Larry Larsen, is tall and roly-poly, at 47 not quite fat--rather, large and dignified. Invariably, he wears a blue Oxford button-down shirt with a pen sticking out of the breast pocket. His manner is at first goofy, like TV detective Colombo's, yet even more disarming than that. Daughter Linda, 27, is the opposite: thin, tough, new wave, a black malachite stud in her right ear, two pearls in the left.